As with red-light districts in many big cities (think Soho in London and Hamburg's Reeperbahn), the Baixo Augusta area of Sao Paulo has been appropriated by the in crowd and transformed into a playground for a different kind of pleasure seeker.

Sex workers and curb crawlers have been replaced with dressed-down kids and glammed-up clubbers looking for new nocturnal diversions. Baixo Augusta has also become a major draw for Sao Paulo's gay community, one of the biggest in Latin America.

Snapping at the heels of the smart, middle-class districts in the southwest of the city, Baixo Augusta (roughly the neighborhoods ringed by Rua Augusta, Rua Frei Caneca and Rua Bela Cintra) is closer to the center of town, not far from the famed Avenida Paulista or the Itaim Bibi district.